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Lonman JackAsp Lonman |
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Lonman View Profile |
Newbie with ??’s
I believe what I have (2) from my back yard are -1-1.5" high american toads, they are small. My question is what does their poop look like. Right now, I have a simple tank set up with dirt, leaves, and some sticks all from the back yard. I have checked, but am not sure what I am even looking for. They have been eating well. Any bugs I put in there, they eat. So far, pill bugs, crickets, flies, and some beetle looking things without pinchers. Fresh water and mist is being done daily. Poop, color? size? consistency? ALSO, I am in central Illinois and these toads are in a 10 gal aquarium and I do not plan on having them outside. Will they want to hibernate? Should I be concerned about what to do with them from November to March-April? Thanks. Lonman |
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| 07/29/08 08:46pm |
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JackAsp View Profile |
Message To: Lonman In reference to Message Id: 1813102 Newbie with ??’s
2. Their poop should look... exactly like poop, actually. if they’re sick, it will be a stinky, runny black or brown sludge that stinks horrendously. Basically, it’ll look like mud, until you sniff it to check, and then you’ll feel like Elmer Fudd does after he looks into his shotgun while trigger-testing it, because it will NOT smell like mud. Or like roses. If they’re healthier, it will be more.. poop-shaped. (This is a hilarious thread, you realize.) It will still feel and smell exactly like what it is, except for things like earthworm slime pr insect chiton. Actually, that’s another thing to look for. Insect shells are not digestible, so if you see a little gooey clump with wings, legs, or miscellaneous pieces of shell in it, you can scratch "poop" off our scavenger hunt list. Often they go in their water dish. The actual fecal matter sinks and mostly dissolves, but there will still be a bunch of legs and wings floating around on the surface. 3. Wild-caught prey items and hard-to-clean naturalistic terraria are both controversial issues. In the wild, when a toad eats parasites, it passes them and keeps hopping. Most of those parasites are killed by storms, sunlight, or even smaller parasites that feed on other parasites before they ever find another host. It’s rough on everybody out there, parasites included, and toads use that to their advantage. So any toad that you catch will be carrying a few things that would be dangerous in larger amounts, but they won’t build up to dangerous levels unless allowed to, for example if the toad is trapped in a small area day after day after day. Most people use cheap, disposeable, clean substrates like Eco-Earth, throw it out regularly, and stick with domstic food items like crickets that have been exposed to fewer diseases and worms than insects from the wild have. You can probably get away with using dirt and leaves from outside as long as you keep throwing it out and starting fresh every week; it’s not so much where the stuff comes from so much as how long you leave it. But most pople find that buying a large amount of something toad-safe and just keepin it right there makes it handy for them to clean the cage more often than if they have to go and forage for new substrate every time. 4. They should eat year round, if they’re kept inside. You might get a few weeks here and there that they don’t want to, but then they’ll fill up again as if nothing was ever wrong. Think how cold it gets at night during a lot of the months that toads are active. The inside of your house during the winter is nothing. |
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| 07/30/08 10:43pm |
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Lonman View Profile |
Message To: JackAsp In reference to Message Id: 1814209 Newbie with ??’s
LP |
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| 08/03/08 05:35pm |
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